The use of the full stop is for me quite bizarre. It splits the initial clause thus "having been dispersed the Median. army shamefully," The comma at the end is what I'd expect from English but splitting off army and shamefully from the rest looks to me like random noise.

pster wrote:I was also told that scholars do debate punctuation, but I have never seen such a debate myself.

There's an interesting (though rarely mentioned) point of debate about the punctuation at Thucydides 1.22.4, where simply moving a comma profoundly transforms the meaning of his famous statement about the value of his work. The suggested change to the standard punctuation was suggested in a paper of 1864 by Goodwin (of Moods and Tenses fame), but astonishingly is not even mentioned in any of the major commentaries (as far as I am aware, only Shilleto's commentary on Book 1 discusses it). I may put a post on this fascinating and important point on the Thucydides thread; in the meantime, anyone interested can find a useful summary in Connor's excellent Thucydides (p. 29, fn. 28).

John W. wrote:There's an interesting (though rarely mentioned) point of debate about the punctuation at Thucydides 1.22.4, where simply moving a comma profoundly transforms the meaning of his famous statement about the value of his work.

If I have grasped the issue (and it is possible I have not) the old version "ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει" has the senses roughly as "it is sufficient that (my work) be judged useful.

Moving the comma gets a sense something like those wishing to examine events which which are similar to those of the future so aiding their ability to judge will find here sufficient (examples).

as least I think that is what Goodwin was suggesting.

Daivid - many thanks for this.

My own translation of the traditional punctuation is:

'... however, in the case of all those who will wish to examine the clear truth both about those things which happened in the past and about those which will, in accordance with the human condition, happen in the same or very similar ways at some point in the future, for these people finding this work useful will be enough.'

With Goodwin's suggested punctuation (about which you are of course quite right), I'd translate:

'... however, in the case of all those who will wish both to examine the clear truth about those things which happened in the past, and to draw useful conclusions about those which will, in accordance with the human condition, happen in the same or very similar ways at some point in the future, for these people this work will be satisfactory as it is.'

'The 'as it is' translates αὐτὰ, the meaning being 'without any mythical element'.

I find Goodwin's suggestion very attractive, as I think the second infinitive clause (καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ... ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν) responds to, and balances, the first one (τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν), amd gives a far more satisfactory sentence structure. Moreover, as an eminent Thucydidean scholar has pointed out to me, it is difficult to take τὸ σαφὲς ('meaning 'the clear and certain truth') as going with τῶν μελλόντων, since it should not be applied to events in the future (I need to get hold of Hunter Rawlings' article in Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie vol. 153 [2010] which mentions this point).

One issue with Goodwin's proposal is taking τῶν μελλόντων ... ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν as meaning 'to draw useful conclusions about ... the future'. However, such a free use of the genitive would in my view be by no means impossible for Thucydides; in his paper Goodwin suggests it was chosen to balance τῶν τε γενομένων in the preceding clause.

I hope this explains things a bit more; apologies for somewhat sidetracking your thread on Herodotus. Still, Herodotus himself was fond of digressions!

daivid wrote:I did contemplate writing to Perseus to report the change but from their FAQ it is clearthat they see their role as to provide stuff that is faithful to the print editions no matter what.

Normally that is probably sensible but surely not in a case where everyone seems to agree that the print version was just plain wrong.

It seems that my interpretation of the FAQ was wrong. The Perseus webmaster has kindly writtento me and in this case they have decided to remove the stray full stop as being clearlya stray speck rather than a punctuation mark intended by the author.